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Where Should Space Exploration Go From Here?
Since Congress has been steadily cutting back on support for NASA, Nick suggests this idea: "I'm sure there are many taxpayers out there like me that would love to see NASA's budget doubled. The problem is there isn't enough support to get congress to increase the budget by that amount, and I really don't want people to pay that don't care to. I propose an opt-in, one-time contribution box added to tax returns. I would require that my money be used only to advance the space program with either a shuttle replacement, an extra crew compartment for the space station, or a launch vehicle for a manned trip to Mars. Would you support a bill that would allow taxpayers to voluntarily contribute money to NASA? Are you ready to put your coin where your Dreams are?"
It should go up.
We will never get much farther unless we find a more efficient, less expensive way of building vessels and machinery. And you can blame congress and their love of pork for most of it.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
Science is not democracy. You can't get to the best decision if you let voters decide. The people at NASA are being paid to be experts, so my vote goes to letting them chart the course. Some mistakes will be made, but I'd rather that they make the decision rather than me and my neighbour, who both have been watching to much Star Trek and Star Wars.
Exploring space and developing new ways of traveling through space is the only way we can ensure that the human race survives the coming centuries or millennia. Some day Earth is going to be devastated by a meteor. Some day our sun will run out of helium to burn and expand into a red giant, boiling away our oceans. If we have colonies in other solar systems, humanity will survive.
The only reason space isn't the top priority of all of the governments of the world today is because we humans as a majority don't really seem to care what happens to our great great great great (and so on) grandchildren. We only care about the here and now. The folks and NASA and the folks in other space programs across the world may be the only ones who care about the future of humanity.
We (the United States) need to stop wasting our money on our already most-powerful military for the purpose of revenge against the middle east and start backing NASA more. Start researching new ways to travel in space, and make a colony in Alpha Century a priority. If we really are the evolved species we claim to be, we'll start caring less about squabbles on this blue marble and more about exploring the universe in which we live.
But again, that's just my 2 cents (and a paper clip)
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
If the Pentagon can spend $200B on the next generation jet fighter, surely the U.S. can spend and additional $20B over the next ten years doing the R&D and prototyping our next spaceplane. Oh wait, we have to build a missle shield first....
The Russians were able to keep a space station in orbit for years, while only using 'capsule' technology. Until we get a new generation of reusable spaceship going, let's go back to that. It was good enough to get us to the moon and back 30+ years ago. Imagine what they could do now. Safer, cheaper, etc.
--
Bless the crews of the Columbia and Challenger. From your sacrifices will come greatness.
- Build a cheaper single-stage-to-orbit vehicle.
- ...
- Profit!
Proposal B:- Develop a self-replicating nanoscale device that eats air.
- Let its progeny digest the entire atmosphere and excrete it as solids.
- Ta-daaaaa, we're in space!
Of course, further study may be advisable.Although some of his arguments are not convincing or even insulting ("Did Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon really have to be there to push a couple of buttons..."), the article makes several important points. Here's one of them:
First, take half of NASA's budget, and make it totally devoted to unmanned missions exclusively. NASA suddenly gets 10x more research done for half the money.
Second, take the other half (billions of dollars, BTW) and make a series of prizes to be won by any group willing to take the risks. Prizes could include:
$200M prize for first profitable 100 megawatt power plant space.
$200M prize for first profitable factory that produces at least $1M in sales. $100M bonus if its a product that currently produces a lot of toxic waste.
$500M prize for agriculture pod that produces 1000 tons of food per year. $250M bonus if it's a forest pod that produces wood.
The key is that SPACE HAS TO PAY FOR ITSELF. Right now the risks are too high and expensive to get started.
Note by the way that this is the ideal way to sell space to people. "Think about all the bad, bad stuff that we can put in orbit instead of polluting the earth. Cheap power. Cheap products. Great for the economy.
Too bad this entirely logical, rational, practical and most importantly, extremely likely to succeed scenerio will never happen. NASA will never give up the control.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Here in Barcelona, not long ago, a pacifist organization proposed adding a box in the tax forms that would disallow the government from spending your taxes on defense research or contracts.
A lot of people signed in the campaign, but the government, of course, did not change anything.
Now imagine if something like this could be done in the USofA, which spends on weapons as much as the 10 next most-spending countries put together!
(All this data is taken out of UN reports, which I'm now too lazy to find...)
With just one year of the DoD budget, famine could be erradicated forever in this planet, and you'd have enough spare change to build another shuttle and send a mission to Mars!
Of course now the important thing is bombing Iraq because the stupid dictator there tried to kill someone's daddy *and* has huge amounts if oil...
If I have posted far, it is because I replied to giants.
But the space shuttle has not lived up to promises, and there are no current technologies which will get space travel to a reasonable cost. Plus, there's really a lack of a mission. I'd say the hubble and other satellites are the only worthwhile things it's done. Given finite resources, what else could we do with those billions? A fusion manhattan project? Thousands more grants to scientists? The end of oil dependence? These are all more valuable things than going to space right now. I hate to say it, but rationally I believe we're better off shuttering nasa and diverting the money to other science endeavors. And if you consider all the possible uses for the money, it becomes more attractive to shutter nasa. Think of the millions in jeapordy from AIDS, and the horrors of Africa and parts of Asia.
While it's nice to think that we'll be pulling some cowboy bebop style shit and just pulling back the throttle on our Swordfish II and going orbital, we need at least an order of magnitude more efficient power generation, power storage, or drive technology, or some combination thereof. The bottom line is that it takes a huge load of energy to build an orbital craft, and it takes quite a bit to launch it. Piggyback designs have thus far not proved to be a solution though there is hope there, I will admit; Still, I don't think it's worth making craft capable of launching from a planet until materials technology improves considerably.
A space elevator would make it downright inexpensive to put things in orbit. If you reserve space, when it becomes cost-effective you can run a superconducting strip down its length (That's a long-ass strip of superconductor! But eventually it will become worth it) and plant nuclear power generation at the other end of the tether where you can simply eject the core if it fissions out of control. (Mount it on a rocket; If the pile goes bad, fire it at the sun.) You could also just put a gigantic solar array there; It should be affordable if it is cheap to put into orbit and has obvious advantages in terms of required maintenance.
In any case, the first step towards building a space elevator is building the massive structure which will have to sit at the other end. If we are going to accomplish this, we need to be working on ways to mine asteroids, smelt ore, form steel, and build structures in space. In other words, we need to be thinking about supporting mining engineers, steel workers, steel fabricators, and so on. It just doesn't make sense for us to be mucking around in space too much (more on this in a second) when it costs us so much, and it costs so much because of the fuel required to lift a given mass. Reduce the amount of mass you lift, this reduces the amount of fuel you have to spend, and the whole thing gets cheaper. Build a space elevator, and you don't even have to use fuel any more; The direct cost and the long-term environmental cost (Putting that much energy into a system always has some effect, and some of the stuff we're putting into the atmosphere is nasty) of a space elevator is essentially nothing when you consider how much traffic you will have if you make it cheaper, and how much less energy must be expended.
Here comes the later: It still makes sense for us to be sending out probes, and testing new technologies for space. But it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of money on that. We should be spending our money on technologies which will bring us the space elevator.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Are you ready to put your coin where your Dreams are?
Giddy up - I'm all for it. Maybe we can get a tax exempt charity status for NASA donations. Maybe one already exists, I dunno. If it was on my 1040 though I'd like that -- more people would see it at least. It'd put it on the forefront of my mind come Tax time.
Personally, I have two uses for the federal government. My military and my space exploration. Beyond that, they're pushing into things that I think my state should handle. I'll spare y'all that ramble though.
I like the idea of space exploration. I sure wasn't around in 1969 when man landed on the moon, but I still get a little lump in my throat when I see things about that era. It makes me proud, not only to be an American but just to be a human being. Hell, I'm filled with awe when I read little tidbits about the early Russian space program, and I was raised in the '80's when the Russians were "bad bad peopole."
I think it's about time we set a real goal for space exploration again, although I'm certainly no expert on this subject. It just seems like it's time to me. We need somebody to step up like JFK did and say "We're going to point X by date Y, and there's no stopping us."
What will we do when we get to Mars, or a station on the moon? I don't know. We'll get something out of the deal though as a society as a whole though I think. Necessity is the mother of all inventions, right?
As it sits, over 50% of my money goes away in taxes right now -- I'd much rather it go to things that I really had an interest in is all.
Getting people into orbit is a fairly easy proposition, if you can keep the lifting hardware from exploding. Getting people back down again safely is the much harder engineering problem. I'm personally kind of amazed that the shuttle was able to make as many successful and safe re-entries and landings as it did. When you think about the forces involved in re-entry... well, it just boggles the mind.
It was at this point that I started thinking. Ever read Starship Troopers? In that book, Heinlein advanced the idea of mobile infantry troopers being dropped from orbit to ground in their own individual little re-entry pods. I started thinking about this.
Picture an astronaut in his spacesuit. He's enclosed in an egg-shaped structure made of aluminum and ablative materials, just barely big enough to hold him. Maybe the structure has a small solid-fuel booster attached that's sufficient to execute a de-orbit burn. With nothing more than the mass of the astronaut and the shell to push around, you wouldn't need much energy to execute such a manuver in low Earth orbit. After the burn, the spent booster falls away (to burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere) and the shell, with astronaut inside, descends through the upper atmosphere, shedding heat through ablation. (In other words, the heat shield boils away on the way down.) At a reasonable altitude, say 100,000 feet or so, the shell opens via explosive bolts and the astronaut free-falls, Kittinger-style. At a suitable altitude, the parachute opens automatically and the astronaut touches down safely.
The advantages of such an orbit-to-Earth system seem kinda obvious to me. We know all about ablative heat shields, having used them for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs as well as every ICBM ever built. A small, symmetrical re-entry structure would be relatively immune to the kind of atmospheric forces that may have destroyed Columbia. Finally, not to seem morbid, in the event of a failure, only one life would be lost instead of the lives of an entire crew.
I don't know. It's just an idea.
I write in my journal
True, NASA has a long history of being a money hog, but it wasn't an issue until they were proposed a budget that was outlandish for anything (The $400 Billion Mars budget proposed by Former President Bush). But the benefits that they have given our economy in the years that they have been around have been huge, not to mention the lift that they have given the research and scientific communities. Without them, there would be nothing like cell phones, satallite communications, large-scale stellar observation (think of the pictures of the hydrogen clouds that have been in every Sci-Fi movie since the Hubble ST took the picture).
Beyond that, the overall economic contribution that the space program contributes is not just in scientific advancement. People often overlook the fact that while NASA takes billions of dollars in tax revenue, they also provide thousands of jobs. Not just to astronaughts like the heroes (yes, heroes) we lost with the columbia, but people from console operators, to sysadmins, to ground keepers.
Nothing in the history of the US has been a symbol to peaceful cooperation like the space program has. At the height of the cold war, we were able to work with our biggest enemy on a joint Apollo-Soyuez (sp?) mission. It represents triumph and advancement against odds, from the story of Apollo 11 and 13, to the tragedies of Apollo 1 and Challenger. It's given kids something to dream about, and actually tells us more about the universe we live in.
The answer is not where it should go, but rather how it should go on. Personally, I would like to see some privatization in the Space Industry, because that would greatly lower the costs of development and space travel. We also need more exploration missions like the Galleleo and Pathfinder projects, which brought a great deal of positive public spotlight to NASA.
The Pathfinder mission showed that NASA could get something done using economic constraints. However, there is a legitimate need for money just to get some of the basic maintinence done (such as the housing facilities for our remaining shuttles). We need to press farther out than the distance that our shuttles and the space station hit.
As a personal recommendation, I'd like to suggest a little reading that I found years ago. The Case for Mars by Dr. Robert Zubrin is an excellent book that shows both the feasibility, need, and purpose on manned exploration beyond our local little planet. It shows, realistically, how we could get the project done without an outlandish budget. While the project talked about at the end is no longer around, the MarsDirect project still exists. http://www.nw.net/mars/ Give it a look.
Remember, NASA is not just about Space Shuttles, but also about exploration and education. Things like those great space picture backgrounds would not be possible without them.
Actually, I'm willing to bet we will learn much more from those Jet fighters and that Missle Defense system than we will ever get out of the mostly political Internation Space Station. The F22 will be able to hit supersonic without afterburners. The Missle Defense system is pushing the limits in a bunch of different technologies, including advanced laser research.
Before you poo-poo Defense Spending remember that you have an Internet because of a certain DARPA project started in the late 60's. The Moon Walk was cool and all but how did it change your daily life? I would argue that the Internet has had a much greater impact on mankind than the moon walk.
Brian Ellenberger
Humans can do the things that robots cannot do. Humans can see the sights and be able to tell when a sight would take a good picture. Humans can make course corrections and such to avoid their craft crashing down. Humans can do science that is impossible for a robot to do. The shuttle needs to fly again and we cannot wait 2 years or more like we did when Challenger was destroyed. Remember, there are two American's and a Russian in space and a good chunk of American hardware up there. The Shuttle is needed because it's the only way the station has for maintaining a orbit. Boosts given by a docked shuttle using the OMS since the budget was cut to eliminate the module that would give the station inhabitants the ability to maintain the orbit on thier own. Single Stage to orbit and other alternatives need to be studied now. Not 10 years from now. The shuttle could make another 20 years, but in that 20 or before that 20 is up a alternative needs to be developed. Mars could be a destination for humans, but we need the station for this. Right now, I would be willing to increase my tax burden to make this possible if I had to. I would also rather there not be a stipulation that it would be used for the mars project. NASA Knows what they are doing. Safety concerns were raised recently due to the decreased budget NASA has. That tells me NASA knows that they were flying on a wing and a prayer, but could not do anything about it. Parking the shuttle in the interim for longer then about 6 months is not acceptable. Of course now it's ok, but sooner than later it will have to fly. Right now, there is no other alternative.
Gorkman
Money certainly is the problem. NASA, and space exploration needs to be a higher priority than some of the garbage we pour money into. Here's some numbers -
NASA's budget for 2003 - now $15.5 billion after the Columbia tragedy
Military budget for 2003 - $396 billion
Now of course I think the military needs a massive amount of money, but they spend it like water, and on things that we do not need.
Here's an example of new weapons we are buying that are included in the 2003 budget -
the Army's RAH-66 Comanche helicopter (Boeing and the Sikorsky Aircraft Division of United Technologies, $941 million); the Air Force's F-22 Raptor (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and the Pratt and Whitney Division of United Technologies, $5.2 billion); the Navy's F-18E/F fighter plane (Boeing, General Electric, and Northrop Grumman, $3.3 billion); Joint Strike Fighter/F-35 (Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, $3.5 billion); the V-22 Osprey (Boeing Vertol and the Bell Helicopter Division of Textron, $2 billion) the DDG-51 destroyer (Bath Iron Works and the Ingalls Shipbuilding Division of Northrop Grumman, $2.7 billion); the Virginia class attack submarine (Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics and the Newport News Shipbuilding division of Northrop Grumman, $2.5 billion); the Trident II Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile (Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space, $626 million); and the Crusader artillery system (Carlyle Group/United Defense, $475 million).
Total - $21.2 billion
These are known as "cold-war relic" programs. In fact, many of these systems were mentioned as candidates for major reductions or cancellation during the Bush campaign and during the early months of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's defense review. In addition they have been criticized in the past by Bush advisors or independent advocates of military reform as being too heavy (the Crusader), redundant (the three new fighter plane programs), or otherwise out of step with our current situation.
If our space shuttles could bomb Iraq we would be getting new ones all the time.
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
Listen, it's this simple: you can throw a trillion dollars at the NASA budget, but it will never make space travel 100% safe. NASA knows that. Astronauts know that. I would venture to guess that the majority of /. readers know that as well. But Congress only appears to see NASA as either pass or fail. People live: pass. People die: fail.
// Personal note -- yes, moreMoney can be a negative value
if (!deadAstronauts)
nasaMoney += moreMoney;
else
nasaMoney = 0;
But, looking at the situation, it's about as logical as having Congress make air travel illegal after 9-11.
But no, instead Congress desides to throw gobs of money at national security to prevent terrorism, and yet they think that it's wise to pull funding from a program which does a much better job of uniting the word together.
What Congress should do is pay NASA $20 million dollars (I think their current budget is about that much) to paste a big warning sticker on the entrance door of each shuttle saying "You fly at your own risk." That way, they state their beliefs, the world has a chance to unite people from around the globe once again, and NASA gets extra funding. Problem solved.
As someone on Fox News pointed out the other day (paraphrasing here):
"It took man 66 years to go from Kitty Hawk to the moon, and in the 34 years since were have gone absolutely nowhere."
That was a pretty good summation of the problem with the Shuttle. It is a proof of concept, but hasn't expanded man's horizons.
I say that the tribute to Columbia's astronauts should be a man stepping on Mars.
Mod me down for saying this, but the honest truth may be the best next step in space exploration is to drop the manned program entirely, and spent the money on better remote probes and satellites. Three billion a year would buy at least 10, probably 20 or 30 pathfinder probes (or an improved model) per year. That's a lot of mars exploration. This isn't a popular view, but there are some convincing arguments.
First, one of the stated goals for the space program is to develop new technology. But when are you more likely to use the latest and greatest bleeding edge experimental engine? On a manned spacecraft where loss is catastophic to the whole program, or a relatively cheap robot? Fact is, the pathfinder mission used some of the fastest processors and lots of new off the shelf technology. They had some bugs with it, which is why it can't be used with a manned mission. Sometimes this approach (known to the press as "better faster cheaper") fails, but the point is its SO much cheaper than a single manned mission a failure is not really that big an issue. For the price of one year of shuttle launches we could send dozens of probes to mars (as said before).
Be honest here. While its said that manned exploration is a precursor to manned colonization, the hard fact is that it takes too much energy to put people in orbit. For a very long, long time it will be easier to use advancing technology to support more people on this earth than move them to space. Besides that, humans aren't adapted to live in space. The basic plan has always been to go to the final frontier...then build a huge enclosed, sheltered colony that the human colonists huddle in 99% of the time. Its like going to the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone then huddling in your Winnebago all week.
A far more realistic plan is to create a life that can live there. I imagine "big clanking replicators" : a huge factory with fairly familar machinery, all of it automated and only requiring human supervision to perform repairs. Mining machines, robotic rock haulers, nuclear power plants, smelters, presses, lathes, ect...most of the robotic tech similar to what you would find in a general motors plant. This facility would be built on the moon, remotely operated by people on earth. It would be capable of constructing the parts to build another facility (and so on). While expensive, it would be a fraction of the cost of human missions, and after enough replications be able to produce useful products.
Unmanned boosters blow up 4% of the time, and its nothing but a finanical nuisance. I've just described a plan that would develop far more advanced, bleeding edge tech than anything that could be used in a manned mission. The technology developed (better industrial automation, better artificial intelligence, better remote telepresense) would be immediatly useful on earth. A manned trip to mars would involve mostly old, proven technology, with a few exotic exceptions necessary for the mission. (such as a nuclear propulsion system, something NOT usable on earth)
I understand why noone will listen to me : there's an incredible glamour about blasting off our heroes into orbit, sending a man out in space to get the job done. Hell, I want to go too. But the truth is, without all the overhead associated with minimizing the risks to said heroes a lot more could be accomplished with the same money. In addition, the new tech and perhaps even real products from space would eventually provide a real return on investment, enriching us on the ground.
Well, I can't, since most of his points are absolutely accurate.
/manned/ space exploration. I think it feeds the human soul and imagination. You don't have to look much past the story of Dr. Kalpana Chawla (an alumnus of the UTA, where i'm graduating in May) to see how the challenge of space can motivate and inspire people.
Exceptions:
Buran was a 3/4 scale duplicate of Shuttle, not the same size. It also never carried a crew...its one mission was unmanned. Read more here.
A crew escape section (a jettisonable cockpit, for instance) is a good idea for launch related problems. Howevet, on reentry, it would be absolutely impossible to get the capsule a) protected from the reentry heat and b) away from the Mach 20 reentering shuttle. It would also be absurdly heavy as a retrofit. I do believe that it should be considered for next-generation reusable spacecraft.
The reason that the Challenger problems were left up to the "old boy" network is the same reason the same engineers that crashed Mars Pathfinder builts its successors: There just aren't a hell of a lot of people who know how to do this stuff. It's horrifically complicated, and the stakes are impossibly high. You don't just let a recent graduate (like I will be soon! Yay!) design a new Shuttle. Or even a system on the shuttle. You use experienced, seasoned engineers, checking and cross-checking each other. And you still have fatal mistakes.
He's also wrong about his (rhetorical) contention that throttling up Challenger's engines was fatal. The solid rocket boosters were already burning (fatally), and they are not throttled. As soon as those things were lit (that is, before it left the ground), the fix was in. That ship was going to die.
I do disagree with a lot of his conclusions. This fellow doesn't seem to be committed to manned space exploration. His discussions about going to the Moon (which is a dead end: Been there, done that) are red herring arguments.
My personal feelings on the future of the space program are very ambiguous. I use that word in the sense that I have very strong, opposing opinions on the topic.
I believe passionately in
However, I think NASA is doing a very bad job of stewarding our resources. They're given a budget (although I certainly wouldn't call it lavish), with the understanding that that budget will be returned to the communities around major NASA installations, and the contractors that supply them. Good engineering or no, that is the only way you can get any sort of large-scale project done in this country: Spread the wealth to as many congresscritters' pork barrels as possible. I don't like it either, but I don't know how to change it.
So, I want people in space. But I don't think that going over and over to LEO accomplishes anything. If I thought it would be possible to say "OK, we're not going to fly any people for five years, but then by God we'll start flight testing our Mars hardware!" I'd be a happy guy. However, I believe that if we don't keep in the habit (if you will) of putting people in space, we will lose the political will to do it. I think that would be Bad, because we (America and its partners) would cede to somebody else (China?) primacy in solar exploration. I think that's a Baad Idea.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Let NASA make what decision? In whose benefit? They've done a mediocra job so far, except in self-promotion -- except for the occasional shuttle accident of roughly 2 in 100.
Neither science nor democracy nor human safety will benefit from giving NASA free reign. We who pay the bills have to decide what the goals our and then work with the engineers to realize them. NASA has focused on self-promotion for too long, though it does a good job of it; its contractors do the work. I am astonished to hear insinuations that NASA budget cuts were behind Challenger, because they didn't have enough money to do it safely. Well, if true, they shouldn't have done it at all.
Frankly, I think watching too much Star Trek and Star Wars is what perpetuates the manned space program. There is very little real science that can only be accomplished with manned flight, except perhaps research to support manned flight, and the circularity of that argument is obvious. The ISS practically exists to justify the shuttle program. We are squandering the opportunity to accomplish more in space and on the ground by funding an extravagantly expensive program based on the assumptions of 70's technology. The capabilities of robotics and automation, and our understanding of science, has advanced far since then.
If decionmaking were placed in the hands of scientists (not NASA) instead of voters, if anything manned spaceflight would suffer the most. Many scientists have been furious for decades at the Shuttle for siphoning money off from useful research, especially interplanetary probes like the ones that brought us so much, Pioneer and Voyager and Mariner and Viking and so on.
The shuttle is not financially justified, especially given its incredibly poor return, when they are many other projects in health, research, and education threatened with cuts because the U.S. faces a record budget deficit. It is hard to shrug off NASA's budget as "only" $14 billion (plus billions in cost overruns) when programs like Head Start that cost "only" $2 billion are criticized as too expensive. Certainly there are a lot of roads that could be built, too; a billion buys a lot unless it's unnecessary space travel.
Absolutely, manned space travel is neat stuff, and I love it. As a kid I paid rapt attention to the shuttle's development, toured a mock-up at Rockwell, and trekked out to the desert to see Columbia land after its very first mission. I am shocked to see it destroyed in 2003, possibly for some the same reasons of mismanagement as Challenger (if it proves relevant, similar but nonlethal tile damage had occurred before, just as known O-ring malfunctions predated Challenger). But we can not let this tragedy spur us into the totally illogical course of wasting even more money on a program that will inevitably lead to more deaths for no reason better than "space is neat stuff."
Is our goal manned space flight for its own sake? *That* is the kind of bad decision democracy can make.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The X-series (discounting the dumb X-33/34, and I use dumb lightly) were a smashing formula for success, and they were the blueprint for the process of getting man on the moon. Pournelle says we need a similar project to focus on building a space ship. Haven't you always wanted a space ship? :)
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
As long as our space efforts are funded by the government, they will always be politicized. People on Slashdot always say "we should give NASA more money," or "we should let NASA be more independent," but you just can't alter the fundamentally political way in which they're run. It's one of the bugs in democracy. Actually, it's present in other political systems as well ("In Soviet Russia, politicians assasinate YOU!"), but that's not important, because I don't think anyone here thinks we should give up democracy for the sake of greater efficiency in NASA. But look at the government programs that surround you every day. Look at the bitter controversies over what age sex education ought to be taught in the public schools (if at all, and should the subject of condoms be raised?). Look at the way the post office raises the price of stamps a penny every year, instead of a nickel every 5. So long as the entire county has to live under only one government, governmental programs are always going to be inefficent, as they must satisfy at least 50% of the population, and a few rich interest groups. The essence of democracy is what they say about a good compromise: "everyone's a little bit upset."
NASA probably was useful in its day. They did get the ball rolling after all. But today, with corporations sending up satellites as part of routine business, expecting a govenrment program to do all of America's space exploration is just not a good idea. We need sustainable space efforts, we need people who have an interest in bringing the cost of getting into space down, and who can take risks without having to think about what it'll mean next November.
Well, this has been a bit of a rant, but that's alright.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
The obvious answer? Space travel is expensive both in $ and resources and its so important that the only way forward is for all nations to have a single Space Agency where nations that wish to contribute to space travel do so to a common pool. They might specialise, some might develop launchers, others plasma drives (like at Australian National University and Rod Boswell) while others might just do theory calculations. But all could participate in the world wide challenge. This is the solution and the way up.
Fun=Linux, caving and anything technical.
The answer has been staring us in the face for decades - Price. If we make space access cheap, the rest will follow. What we have done up to this point, is basic feasability testing. Enough already! We know its feasible. There are thousands upon thousands of amzing engineering papers that have been published that will revolutionize space travel and habitation. The one thing, the ONLY thing keeping it from happening, is the cost per pound to orbit.
And the sad part is, there are hundreds of designs that could and would reduce the cost to orbit from its exorbitant $10,000/lb to less than $100/lb. But you know what? All of the aerospace contractors have lobbied for years for these advances to be underfunded, never considered, or just plain cancelled.
I agree with the Cliff, I'm pinning all of my space dreams and hopes on the advent of mass-produced carbon nanotubes. Once they become available, the entire economics of space will change radically. Finally, it will make economic sense for even the most conservative corporations to invest in space industrialization.
Planet P Blog - Liberty with Technology.
www.enthea.org
Perhaps they should have priced it in terms of Shuttle missions. The shuttle has launched over 100 times, at a typical cost of about $500M per launch equals roughly $50G, so their elevator would be priced at 80 shuttle missions or under 4/5 of the money spent so far running the Shuttles.
Speaking of which: in terms of fatalities per passenger mile, they're much safer than jetliners, orders of magnitude better than your car. OTOH, you car doesn't cost billions of dollars to replace if you write it off. OT3H, I'd be really happy if I got that many miles out of any car, ever. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
... until we achieve practical nanotechnology or large-scale robotic assembly (both here and in orbit), that making space travel practical will simply be too expensive.
However, that having been said, making expensive incremental advances is the best we can do until then -- so we must keep plodding along.
But what I want to know is WHY haven't important advances like the linear aerospike engine developed for the X-33 been put to use? I thought NASA's job was to push technology forward, not to bury it. For those unaware of what a linear aerospike engine is, here's one small tidbit that helps explain its value: conventional rocket engines lose effectiveness as the ambient air pressure changes and must use expensive and complex nozzle geometry changes to minimize this. The linear aerospike maintains a near-constant efficiency from surface to orbit.
Before the X-33 program was folded amidst cries of bug-ridden technology and cost overruns (ostensibly due to a single fuel tank failure during testing -- remember the early problems with shuttle tiles? the Apollo 100% oxygen atmosphere that resulted in 3 deaths before everything was redesigned to become more flame-retardant? The X-33 fuel tank problems were a stalking horse designed to let the military take it over.), the linear aerospike performed flawlessly. And where is it now? Check the url above to see in what part of Boeing it resides.
And with the inherent weaknesses of the decades-old shuttle fresh in your mind, check out this link (originally from www.milnet.com, but now only available via the google cache) for the advantages the X-33 presented over the shuttle. The VentureStar might not have made as good a truck as the shuttle, but unmanned cargo rockets (like those the Russians do so well) are better vehicles to boost freight into orbit.
Perhaps when we have a Chinese space station passing over the US every ninety minutes the government will figure out that NASA has a role other than a place to take funding from to backfill budgets that cannot be supported on their own merits.
Eventually, when large scale robotic manufacturing and practical nanotechnology drive the cost of making things through the floor (assuming it doesn't bury us in grey goo), we'll be able to grow space elevators and put hotels and shopping centers in orbit (not to mention nanotech development facilities, zero-G hospitals and organ farms). Until that time, access to space will continue to be controlled/blocked by that servant of the people, the gummint.
Have I been waiting for this day on Slashdot!
I know that this won't get modded up. First it is an anti-space exploration post (i.e. flamebait). Second, there are over 700 other posts out there - good luck moderators.
Anyway...
Here is the next direction NASA should take into space: they shouldn't send humans into it!
It is expensive.
It is dangerous.
It achieves little but inspiration for powerless/low social status techno-geeks.
Instead, our country should explore alternatives that advance science and technology as much as NASA uplifts our geeky spirits. There is, to my mind, only one true alternative to the wasteful, and hardly economically viable model of space exploration we currently have. That alternative is to explore and study the OCEAN.
Obviously, satellites, and mechanized thingamajigs belong in our country's arsenal of neato-exploration-based stuff. Their practical benefit is a widely heralded success.
However, the economic reality of sending people hurtling into the upper atmosphere and beyond, for a dubious "scientific" cause of "jus' cuz we can" is one that our country (and that no country on earth) can accept.
An intensive study of the ocean, based on the same sorts of ideas that NASA uses to explore space would yield inumerable direct benefits to commerce, defense, and concomitant scientific progress. Further, in terms of inspiring geeks, I can think only of the CS majors at my coastal university who I see walking alone on the beach, looking out to sea for answers. If we as a nation decide that our tax money ought to be spent in beneficial research and exploration into new frontiers, then, lone geeks on the beach everywhere, the ocean has the answers waiting for you.
Now that the shock of the Columbia's loss has set in and we are starting to put together what exactly happened, I was thinking to myself what NASA should do to increase mankind's presence in orbit and how to go about it. It is apparent to me that the current Space Transportation System (STS) is in need of replacement. The last time we tried to do that was under the Space Launch Initiative (SLI) under the Clinton administration. That program was a failure, not because of Clintons people, but because there were technological and monetary hurdles that couldn't be properly addressed. However there is a way to do this. Right now the STS fleet is grounded, so the immediate concern is how to keep the ISS in orbit and fully manned. Russian President Putin has promised to build more Soyuz space craft to insure ISS is manned and supplied. From what I've found, it cost Russian anywhere from 25 to 50 million bucks to launch a manned Soyuz and a little less for a Progress supply ship. I would propose that the US discontinue any crew transport missions for the Shuttle to ISS and pay a significant portion of the money needed to keep Soyuz ships flying to ISS instead. If these ships cost 50 million bucks then there is a savings of 450 million bucks for each transport (the Shuttle cost 500 million to fly). When the Shuttle is back on it's feet, it should ONLY fly construction missions to finish the ISS. The the STS should be retired. That begs the question, what do we do with 450 mil for each flight that doesn't go? Since there are typically 6 or 7 flights by the Shuttle per year, about half of them are for significant construction of ISS. So we are looking at a savings of nearly 1.5 billion per fiscal year. THAT money should be invested in a completely new Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) space shuttle like the X-33 was meant to be. But that's not all. In order for space travel to become affordable, space vehicles must become more affordable. Building 5 space shuttles cost the taxpayers between 3 and 5 billion for each one (the Endeavor cost 3 billion because it was built from spare parts). If we could build say 20 or 30 space shuttles, the cost could possibly be cut in half or perhaps more. NASA doesn't need 20 or 30 shuttles, however, if we could get the European Space Agency (ESA), the Russians, the Japanese, Aussies, and even the Koreans to join up with the promise of owning their own shuttles, the cost could be easily be spread out. You see, the Europeans would get out from under NASA's shadow which they have for so long hated. They wanted to build a ship back in the 80's called the Sanger but they didn't have the money for it. The Europeans don't have the experience of space travel that we or the Russians do but they do have a lot of technology and engineering that they can bring to the table. The Russians are obvious additions because of their experience. What they can't bring to the table in money, they can definitly bring in know how. The Japanese have always wanted a manned space program but they too don't have the money to foot the bill all the way. In addition, their rocket program has suffered many setbacks. The Koreans would look on this as national pride IMO and rightly so. We of course know more about Shuttles than anyone and of course can bring more money to the table. America would still have it's leadership role in the project but would still have to work with members of the coalition. You see, I no longer see space exploration as an American dream. This is a HUMAN endeavor. We as Americans (or Russians) just happen to be better at it than anyone else. If we build a shuttle or two that can haul cargo and personnel to low Earth orbit in a cost effective manner, we will see more and more people going and that is the goal. Get more up there so we can do more. NASA has already learned that it needs to get out of the space launching business and get into the Space Exploration and Space Science business. NASA was essentially going to sell the Shuttles to the United Space Alliance and lease them back. The USA was going to maintain the Shuttles and NASA pilots were going to fly them. NASA needs to get away from the space monopoly that it has created so that competition can be built. The same thing happened when NASA got out of the satelite launching business after the Challenger disaster. Getting people to compete and getting a new reliable shuttle with the world behind it will establish a firm foothold in space for the human race. Right now we have had our foot in the door for too long and last Saturday it got jammed. Now it's time to kick open the door and step inside. Once we have a firm foundation in orbit and on the moon, then we can procede to the Planets and the stars.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
For starters, I'd like to see the X-33/VentureStar program get back on track. The Aerospike engine was a phenomenal success, IIRC, and the only problem they had was that of the composite fuel tanks. (If they go with standard aluminum tanks, they lose like 90% of their payload.) I'd like to see that program reactivated and the composite fuel tank problem solved.
:-)
Also, a "from orbit" escape system wouldn't be a bad idea. Set up a "mini" space station that orbits in the same general area as the new shuttle system. Said mini station would merely be a truss (similar to what they've been putting on the ISS), with two Apollo-style capsules attached, a solar panel system to keep the capsule systems warm and the batteries charged, and a small set of OMS thrusters to automatically maintain the station's orbit. This way, if an orbiter is ever damaged on the way up again, and it's uncertain whether or not it will survive re-entry, it can dock with this, the crew can return to Earth in capsules, and a later servicing flight can come up to repair the orbiter and replace the capsules.
I'm not sure we can cease shuttle flights altogether, and I also think it's important to remember that Columbia was the oldest in the fleet and on the verge of being retired. I think we have to keep flying Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour for the time being. Along those same lines, I'm also an advocate of "Big Can" construction projects in orbit. It's a clever hack.
I also think it would be dangerously stupid to build just a reusable launch system again. The Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) are extraordinarily powerful and extremely reliable, and we're in need of a good heavy-lift booster system...especially if we're going to do what NASA needs to do in the near future -- the Moon and Mars. A system similar to what Robert Zubrin proposed in A Case for Mars would be great: basically, a space shuttle launch stack without the space shuttle, and the primary tank fueling four SSMEs. I believe this would allow you to throw ~200 tons into LEO, but I don't have the book in front of me.
Once a new reusable launch system and heavy-launch system are in place, I'd give the last three shuttles a final flight into orbit, with return capsules for the crews. Once in orbit, they ought to be stripped down and overhauled for use as orbital "tugboats"...
And lastly, start going somewhere again...first the Moon, then Mars and the asteroids...then...who knows?
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